The ‘little tramp’ paradox: don’t blame kids

Stuff.co.nz 5 Oct 2012
Young girls should not be shamed for dressing like “tarts” and “hookers” because this is how society is teaching them to dress, an Australian academic argues.

In an era when 10-year-olds model for Paris Vogueand a Canadian business offers “Little Spinners” pole dancing classes, Dr Michelle Smith says notions of promiscuity and empowerment are more contradictory than ever.

In a speech yesterday Smith, from Melbourne University, said girls “are branded “tarts” and “hookers” for dressing in a way that reveals their bodies, but are immersed in popular culture that presents being sexy and sexually available as the foremost qualities of the ideal woman.”

Film, television, advertising, magazines and the internet are all to blame, Smith said.

“Dear Target,” school teacher Ana Amini wrote, “Could you possibly make a range of clothing for girls 7-14 years that doesn’t make them look like tramps … You have lost me as a customer when buying apparel for my daughter as I don’t want her thinking shorts up her backside are the norm or fashionable.”

In the Victorian era, girlhood was treated as a distinct stage between childhood and womanhood.

“Being a girl meant being in a state of transition,” Smith said, and the media largely reinforced this idea.